BC NDP government very unpopular as anti-woke party gains traction
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of Polling Update, Wyatt talks about the insane history of BC politics over the past four years, and why John Rustad is a repeat of what happened to the old BC Liberal Party and the BC Conservative Party.
Transcript
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Ahoy everyone, Wyatt Claypool here back with another polling update video.
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This time we're talking about the province of British Columbia.
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And as somebody who actually works in BC politics, I gotta tell you,
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it is nearly impossible to overemphasize just how insane BC provincial politics is.
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In fact, before we talk about the Angus Reid poll I want to discuss today,
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I want to tell you about the lore of BC politics over the past four years.
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Because it's kind of funny watching things change so much, but also stay the exact same.
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I'm going to get to that in just a second, but first I'm going to do my normal plugs, guys.
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Hey, if you like the show, make sure to leave a like on this video.
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Subscribe. If you are not yet a subscriber and you like hearing these polling updates,
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I usually am at home with a whiteboard where I actually jot down all the stats,
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but I'm working at the legislature right now, so I just have this hotel room to work with.
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In fact, it's a very good hotel because it has white walls and the lighting's actually kind of nice.
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And then if you are a subscriber, I just wanted to remind you,
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if you haven't hit the notification bell, please hit the notification bell next to the subscribe button.
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It will let you know whenever I've put out a new video,
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which does help us on the algorithm a bit when people are able to watch it
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sooner to when the video actually does come out.
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Anyways, now we got to get into the story of BC politics over the past four years.
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So four years ago, we have two main parties in BC politics.
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We have the BC NDP, we have the BC Liberals, and we also kind of have the BC Greens.
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And within four years, we had the BC Liberal Party change its name to BC United.
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We had the Liberals kick out John Rustad, who then restarted the BC Conservative Party.
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BC United then takes a dirt nap, and then the Conservatives nearly win the election,
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but come a little bit short, only like 400 votes across a few ridings,
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And now we are in a situation today where the BC Conservatives and John Rustad
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looked at what happened to the Liberals slash United Party,
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and they're saying, hey, how about we do that again?
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How about we basically sabotage ourselves and take a dirt nap?
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Remember, John Rustad was literally kicked out of the BC Liberal Party
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by then-leader Kevin Falcon because he had made a comment about climate change
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but Kevin Falcon was trying to prove how tough he was
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by kicking out somebody who had crossed him on an issue
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and was not saying the BC Liberal Party orthodoxy.
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And then you had another BC Liberal, although then the party was called BC United,
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Bruce Bandman joins John Rustad, they become an official party in the legislature,
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and the polling really starts kicking off to the point where United starts
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polling below the Conservatives, they completely stall out and die,
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and people vote for the Conservatives because, hey,
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it looks like it's actually going to bring real change.
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huh, change is cute and all, but I don't really want to do that,
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let's just be the old BC United Party that basically just tells the government,
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how about you do things a little bit better, and that's it.
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They don't actually represent transformational change anymore,
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it is just a party for policy wonks who think that instead of actually cutting tax and regulations,
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And now, because of all the shenanigans and Rustad kicking people out of the party left and right,
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we now have a situation where history is once again repeating itself,
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but let's hope that we actually get the good outcome this time,
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because we now have the 1BC Party at 5% provincially.
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This poll is the first one to put BC United in and have them over 1%.
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At the same time, I also basically make no money doing it.
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I do this basically as a passion job, a passion project.
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1BC, led by MLA Dallas Brody, is currently doing better than John Rustad was as the BC Conservative leader
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a couple months into his time as the BC Conservative leader.
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So 1BC is already taking off faster than the old BC Conservatives did when John Rustad took them over,
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but the funny thing in all of this is that, in fact, the NDP is still below the BC Conservatives.
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The BC Conservatives, who basically represent no real change from the current government,
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they kind of oppose them on Sochi and they kind of oppose them on drug policy and all that stuff,
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but the Conservatives, really, they only talk about healthcare and crime,
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They don't want to talk about the crazy land acknowledgement stuff everywhere
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and UNDRIP and DRIPA and the trans policies and gender theory.
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They don't want to talk about any of that stuff anymore because it's uncomfortable.
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But because even though you could say the right is divided, in fact, the NDP is still doing really bad right now.
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And this is something I'm going to have to combat a lot with 1BC.
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1BC is not taking votes from the Conservatives.
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The Conservatives are dumping votes over the side of their ship and we're collecting it,
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but 1BC, in fact, is actually taking votes from the NDP as well.
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Because when you look right here, I'm going to, this is, so overall, right here, 1BC is in yellow,
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1BC is at 5, Greens are at 11, Conservatives are at 41, and the NDP is at 40.
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But come over here to the interior, and 1BC is at 8%, Greens are at 7, Conservatives are at 55, and the NDP is at 28.
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When I looked at numbers for the 1BC party and comparing it to past polls,
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the 1BC party in places like Metro Vancouver and the Interior are actually taking votes almost equally from the BC Conservatives and the BC NDP.
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Because one thing that's lacking in BC politics is a party that really kind of represents voters on a personal level.
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I don't mean that from this kind of pretentious grassroots thing where we need more town halls,
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where people get up and holler about what they don't like, and then the MLA's like, I agree with you.
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I mean in the sense that 1BC talks like the average voter that is upset about the government.
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They're not just tinkering around the edges, trying to find little things they slightly disagree with the NDP on to get upset about,
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The 1BC party represents everyone who finds land acknowledgments annoying,
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who thinks gender theory needs to be completely stripped out of schools,
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who thinks that you actually should be shaming people for having drug addictions and forcing them into care.
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You know, the kind of, like the blue-collar working-class guy who's really tired of elitist politicians,
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who they'll kind of acknowledge there are problems, but they don't really get it.
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They kind of talk about why the addictions problem's bad,
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but they don't talk about re-stigmatizing drug users and shaming people for using drugs
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and locking people up for as long as possible if they're dealing drugs and all that.
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You have too many people who, I don't even know how to really describe it,
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who are kind of, in the Conservative Party at least,
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who talk about everything like all we need is a policy summit and we can solve this,
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rather than, like, you know, the guys who think that the problem with the economy
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is just that we need better supports for the forestry industry.
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Not that we just need to slash taxes and regulations and let people do their own thing.
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We need a policy summit to figure out the best stimulus package
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to try and feed into the economy to boost us up.
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That's what people really hate and they want a party that just wants to dismantle what we're currently doing.
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They want the current establishment of BC politics dismantled.
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But now I need to show you guys some other things that should be quite concerning
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if you're both the BC Conservatives as well as the BC NDP government.
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And by the way, this poll probably actually underpoles 1BC a bit
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because the Fraser Valley, they only have 1BC at 2% in the Fraser Valley.
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And if you were at our rally in the Fraser Valley,
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1BC was able to get out 210 people for our event, our opening town hall in Abbotsford.
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You don't get over 210 people out on short notice for a party that has no popularity in the area.
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If anything, the Fraser Valley may be one of our best regions right now.
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So we've only been operating for two months and we have three years until the next election.
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Obviously, it is our duty as a party to push as hard as humanly possible
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to make sure that as many people know about us as possible.
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John Rustad, the current leader of the BC Conservative Party,
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is in a leadership crisis because, frankly, nobody really likes him that much.
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And so he's in the situation where a lot of his own party,
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including his own party's board, want him to resign,
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but they have no legal mechanism to actually get rid of him.
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And so Rustad is just persisting along, refusing to give it up,
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because I created this party and so why should I step down?
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Even though he's just a massive roadblock for the Conservatives,
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even getting close to winning the next election.
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Because although this poll makes them look good,
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that's more of a fatigue problem with the NDP than people actually liking the Conservatives.
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If you were advising BC Conservative leader John Rustad,
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with gray obviously being not sure or can't save.
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Overall, 59% of British Columbians think he should resign.
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But you could say, well, that's a lot of partisan, green, and NDP voters
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saying that he should resign, because of course they're going to say that.
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48% of people who voted Conservative in the last election think that John Rustad should resign.
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41% of people who selected the Conservatives as the option they would vote for in this new election,
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if a new election was called, say that he should also resign.
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25% of people selecting Conservatives now think he should stay on.
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20% who voted for the party in 2024 think that he should stay on.
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And in fact, usually there's 30% in both of these categories, a little more than that,
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But remember, people who are not sure tend to usually mirror the opinions of those who are
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But you as the NDP may be getting a bit cocky, thinking, well, if we call an election right
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now, we would win because John Rustad is so unpopular.
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How satisfied are you with the performance of the BC NDP government?
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The total right now is 34% are satisfied and 56% are unsatisfied with 10% being unsure.
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In fact, 11% of BC NDP voters in the last election are unsatisfied.
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Or even, yeah, and this is provincial vote intent.
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Currently, they are relying on 11% of people who don't actually like them to vote for them,
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maybe because they think they're still better than the Greens and the Conservatives.
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Although those people who voted NDP in the last election, over a quarter, 26%,
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And it gets even worse when I bring up this other chart.
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But when I bring up this other chart that shows that when you actually look at the satisfaction
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The amount of people who are very satisfied is minuscule within that 33%.
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This is from the Angus Reid poll, but they just put it in a nice visual way.
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Only 3% of people in British Columbia would rate themselves as very satisfied, with 30%
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being somewhat satisfied, 23% being somewhat dissatisfied, but 33% being very dissatisfied.
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You want, often it's hard to satisfy people in politics, but you want that number to be like
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If you want re-election, you need that number to be substantial, like a third of the people
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who are going to vote for you, or at least a quarter of the people who are going to vote
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3% means less than 10% of those who would vote NDP in the next election truly actually
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They're relying on a lot of people who are somewhat satisfied.
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So, if you add those two numbers together, 33%, that means even if they won every single
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one of those voters, which that's not actually fully likely because they're going to get some
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people who are somewhat satisfied, but they vote Green, they would still need to find another
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portion of people to vote for them who are unsatisfied or very unsatisfied, which sounds
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Because someone who's unsatisfied is probably not going to show up.
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Yes, if you put the lever in front of them and told them, would you vote NDP or Conservative,
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they may pull the NDP lever, but they're probably not going to drive themselves to the polls to
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vote for a party and keep in a government that they don't really like all that much.
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And this is where one BC party has a lot of room to grow.
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We have a BC Conservative party led by an extremely unpopular leader.
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I mean, John Rustad literally has a negative 40 approval rating.
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That should be impossible to get that bad of an approval rating.
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Now, technically, you also have somebody like Dallas Brody who doesn't have a positive approval
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rating, but literally right now, nobody in BC politics has a positive approval rating.
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Obviously, she's not going to have a great approval rating.
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But 10% isn't too bad right now, considering all of the media attacks.
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26% have an unfavorable or very unfavorable rating, but she's doing better than the leader
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And again, there's a lot more work to be done in promoting Dallas Brody.
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And again, we are at the low point for her popularity because everything that most people
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have seen has been negative, where now, as she's going to get more attention, she's going
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to be able to pitch herself directly to British Columbians with her own social media and in
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independent media in order to build up her popularity.
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Even but that that being said, Dallas Brody is only 1% less popular in terms of the net ratings
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And of course, John Rustad's actual ratings are abysmal when you look at what people think
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It's absolutely ridiculous how few people actually like him whatsoever.
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We don't need to look at any more at these stats.
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The Greens are on the rise, which is actually also hurting the NDP right now.
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And if center BC is able to get two MLAs, which is actually not impossible because there
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are currently two very center left-leaning former conservative MLAs sitting as independents,
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Eleanor Sturko and Amelia Boltby, who could, in theory, take over the center BC party with
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Karen Kirkpatrick and be the two MLAs in the House that give them party status.
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That would be very good for everyone on the right, because if center BC gains MLAs and
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they start getting momentum, they aren't going to be taking votes from the conservatives very
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It's mostly going to be federal liberals who typically vote NDP in the metro Vancouver area
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and on Vancouver Island and in places like Kelowna, who are going to be voting center BC.
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They probably won't win a seat, but in an election, they could grab four or five percent of the
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vote after a couple of years of marketing themselves.
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And they could keep, you know, 12 percent of federal liberal voters out of the hands of
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the BC NDP that they absolutely need to be able to win the next election.
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But again, I also saw a stat in this out in this Angus Reid poll.
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It's not worth bringing up, but it was asking people how aware are they of the whole leadership
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crisis issue going on inside of the BC Conservative Party?
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And, you know, what do you know about John Rustad and what he's been doing?
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It's a small group of people who've been following politics that closely to even know about it,
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which is great news, because if people are barely paying attention to that big scandal,
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they probably don't even, most people don't even really know what 1BC is yet.
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And if you're already winning five percent of people when most people have no clue who you are
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yet, it means that you have a very high conversion rate with those who have heard of you.
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So we're probably winning five percent of the 12 percent of people who even know enough about
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But anyways, with that all being said, thank you guys for watching this video.
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Check out the 1BC Party in the description below and pinned at the top of the comments.
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If you're curious and you live in British Columbia.
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But other than that, I just want to encourage you guys to like, share, subscribe,